Wang Laboratories, Inc.

Harold S Koplow

David Moros

Daniel W Corwin

Paul Anagnostopoulos

An Wang

Donald R Dunning

A Edward Wild, Jr

A text-editing system having a keyboard for the input of character and text-editing operation signals, writable text storage, display and writable display storage, and control storage storing groups of microinstructions. A system control is responsive to an interrupt signal from the keyboard for decoding an input signal and deriving therefrom internal control signals for operation of the system, including modification of the display storage and text storage. Apparatus is provided for inputting the character and text-editing operation signals in either of two alternative modes. A select/store circuit is responsive to a select/store signal to select from the text storage character and operation signals modified according to a first alternative mode and to store them in a special condition storage. The system control is thereafter responsive to a recall signal to disable the keyboard interrupt, retrieve the stored signals, and operate according to them. Also, apparatus is provided for inputting the text-editing operation signals in association with a special input condition signal. Displayable representations of such operation signals are accessed, displayed and stored in text storage, but the operation is not carried out. The select/store circuit replaces the displayable representations with executable representations.

Text editing system having flexible repetitive operation capability

An improvement in a text-editing system having a keyboard for inputting character and text-editing operation signals, a CRT display, display storage and text storage, and additional special condition storage; the system responds to a select/store signal to select a sequence of signals from text storage and store it into special condition storage, and thereafter responds to a recall signal to disable the keyboard, retrieve the stored sequence, and operate according to it. A keyboard interactive operation signal can be stored as part of such a sequence. The system responds to retrieval of this signal to permit input of a keystroke string through the keyboard to the display storage and text storage; the system further responds to a keystroke string end indicator, input through the keyboard, to resume recall and execution of the stored sequence.

Text editing system having flexible repetitive operation capability with

A distributed data processing system having a magnetic disk and a master disk control and communication control unit; a slave work station unit having a keyboard for the input of data and a cathode ray tube display screen for the display of input data; and a slave output printer. The work station display is a CRT screen which can display 24 lines each of 80 characters, or a total of 1920 characters. The keyboard is similar to that of a standard electric typewriter with the addition of special instruction keys and keys for moving a cursor symbol on the screen. Optionally, other slave peripheral devices, such as a telecommunications link, a line printer, or a paper tape punch, may be provided. All slave units of the system are connected to the master unit by coaxial cables. Access to the disk for data reads and writes is under control of the master unit. Requests by slave devices for such access are signaled to the master unit by 'semaphores', which are specific areas in slave memory that may contain particular values indicating requests for particular services. Such semaphores are set by the slave, and are periodically polled and read by the master. The requested services are provided by the master, after which the master resets the semaphore value to a quantity indicating that the requested service has been completed. In addition to disk access, slave devices may request services of other slaves; these requests are relayed by the master.

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Lynnfield, MA, United States of America

Harold S Koplow